Magician of Lublin - Softcover

Singer, Isaac Bashevis

3.91

3,374 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0449214796 ISBN 13: 9780449214794

Publisher: Fawcett, 1987

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THE MAGICIAN OF LUBLIN (orig. published in print in 1960) tells the story of Yasha, a talented magician who performs throughout Poland in the last 1800’s. He has the talent to pick any lock, escape any barrier. A non-observant Jew, Yasha finds that his abilities to juggle before an audience extend to the lives he must juggle off-stage. While his religious, dutiful wife waits for him at home, his many mistresses eagerly await his next trip to the city.

Yasha Mazur, the main character, is a Jewish Don Juan, consumed with restlessness and expressing it through a myriad of affairs. Caught between shtetl values and theatrical sophistication, Yasha is confronted with the greatest challenge of his life. How he escapes, and ultimately finds his own true self, is a parable of man’s ongoing search for personal meaning.

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From the Publisher:

Like one of his mystical characters dancing between worlds of reality and fantasy, Isaac Bashevis Singer’s literary legacy – ten years after the Nobel Laureate passed away – is being reborn.

Jewish Contemporary Classics, Inc. has now published THE MAGICIAN OF LUBLIN, one of Bashevis Singer’s most famous novels, on as a six-cassette unabridged audiobook.

Veteran narrator and Broadway star Larry Keith reads this wonderfully crafted story of promiscuity and redemption, moving effortlessly among the voices of housewives, thieves and professors. The book is introduced by Bea Arthur, star of television’s “The Golden Girls.”

From the Inside Flap:

Awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1978, Isaac Bashevis Singer accepted the prize by first giving a speech in Yiddish, the language of his writing, and then delivered the following remarks in English.

“The storyteller and poet of our time, as in any other time, must be an entertainer of the spirit in the full sense of the word, not just a preacher of social or political ideals. There is no paradise for bored readers and no excuse for tedious literature that does not intrigue the reader, uplift his spirit, give him the joy and the escape that true art always grants.

“Nevertheless, it is also true that the serious writer of our time must be deeply concerned about the problems of his generation. He cannot but see that the power of religion, especially belief in revelation, is weaker today than it was in any other epoch in human history. More and more children grow up without faith in God, without belief in reward and punishment, in the immortality of the soul, and even in the validity of ethics.

“The genuine writer cannot ignore the fact that the family is losing its spiritual foundation. All the dismal prophecies of [German philosopher and historian] Oswald Spengler have become realities since the Second World War. No technological achievements can mitigate the disappointment of modern man, his loneliness, his feeling of inferiority, and his fear of war, revolution, and terror. Not only has our generation lost faith in Providence, but also in man in himself, in his institutions, and often in those who are nearest to him.

“In their despair a number of those who no longer have confidence in the leadership of our society look up to the writer, the master of words. They hope against hope that the man of talent and sensitivity can perhaps rescue civilization. Maybe there is a spark of the prophet in the artist after all.

“As the son of a people who received the worst blows that human madness can inflict, I have many times resigned myself to never finding a true way out. But a new hope always emerges, telling me that it is not yet too late for all of us to take stock and make a decision. I was brought up to believe in free will.

“Although I came to doubt all revelation, I can never accept the idea that the universe is a physical or chemical accident, a result of blind evolution. Even though I learned to recognize the lies, the clich�s, and the idolatries of the human mind, I still cling to some truths which I think all of us might accept someday. There must be a way for man to attain all possible pleasures, all the powers and knowledge that nature can grant him, and still serve God—a God who speaks in deeds, not in words, and whose vocabulary is the universe. “I am not ashamed to admit that I belong to those who fantasize that literature is capable of bringing new horizons amid new perspectives—philosophical, religious, aesthetical, and even social. In the history of old Jewish literature, there was never any basic difference between the poet and the prophet. Our ancient poetry often became law and a way of life.

“Some of my cronies in the cafeteria near the Jewish Daily Forward in New York call me a pessimist and a decadent, but there is always a background of faith behind resignation. I found comfort in such pessimists and decadents as Baudelaire, Verlaine, Edgar Allan Poe, and Strindberg. My interest in psychic research made me find solace in such mystics as your Swedenborg and in our own Rabbi Nachman Bratzlaver, as well as in a great poet of my time, my friend Aaron Zeitlin, who died a few years ago and left a spiritual inheritance of high quality, most of it in Yiddish.

“The pessimism of the creative person is not decadence but a mighty passion for the redemption of man. While the poet entertains, he continues to search for eternal truths, for the essence of being. In his own fashion he tries to solve the riddle of time and change, to find an answer to suffering, to reveal love in the very abyss of cruelty and injustice.

“Strange as these words may sound, I often play with the idea that when all the social theories collapse and wars and revolutions leave humanity in utter gloom, the poet—whom Plato banned from his Republic—may rise up and save us all.”

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